Are you ready for your midweek outrage? Veritas Investments is San Francisco’s biggest landlord. They own over 200 buildings, deciding the fate of over 5,000 units throughout The City. They are valued at more than $3 billion. Which is to say, they are an ultra wealthy, extremely successful large company that shouldn’t remotely qualify for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) that Congress recently rolled out to help small businesses.

Well on Tuesday, Mission Local broke the news that Veritas not only received a $3.6 million forgivable loan through the PPP, they have no plans on giving it back.

Last month it became known that a number of large companies including Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, Shake Shack, and the Los Angeles Lakers, also received multimillion dollar PPP loans. After massive amounts of public outrage these companies have pledged to return the money. But Veritas which, according to the Mission Local article, is worth more than any of these companies – yes, more than the Lakers! – responded with a smug “Nah.”

On behalf of all the small businesses out there who haven’t received a penny of the PPP money, and are desperately trying to figure out how they will survive, I’d like to extend a heartfelt “Fuck You” to Veritas Investments.

This isn’t the first shady thing that Veritas has done, not by a long shot. They’ve ‘allegedly’ harassed longterm, rent controlled tenants in order to try to get them out. They’ve ‘allegedly’ charged obscene rent increases to “cover rising maintenance and operations costs”. They’ve ‘allegedly’ maintained squalid building with lead-contaminated water and broken elevators. They’ve even ‘allegedly’ threatened to sue a housing nonprofit for a Facebook post they didn’t like. And that’s just the stuff people have been brave enough to speak out about. Just imagine all the other nefarious things they’ve gotten away with because people have been afraid they might lose their housing if they spoke up. Allegedly…of course.

For their part Veritas claims the money is to “save the jobs of our front line employees, and is critical to our business operations and keeping these San Francisco workers employed.” They later go on to admit that the people they’ve furloughed and given salary cuts to are the folks who have the most responsibility yet make the least amount of money, the maintenance people, building managers, and resident services team.

To which I again say “Fuck You” to Veritas.

If you think they are greedy, shady people, and that they should give the money back their contact page is right here. Call and email them and let them know that they should not only give the money back, but also their management team should personally pay to bring back all their furloughed workers. Because, we all know they can afford it.

Spread the word.

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Broke-Ass Stuart - Editor In Cheap

I've been called "an Underground legend": SF Chronicle , "an SF cult hero": SF Bay Guardian, and "the chief of cheap": Time Out New York, but to those familiar with my work, I'm just "that douchebag who writes books about cheap stuff and drinks a lot".

7 Comments

I’m going to go out on a limb and say the owners of Veritas that made the decision to not return the money should be executed. That’s right, executed. I’m not usually a fan of capital punishment, and still not for most crimes. This is such a violation of the public extremes measures would be warranted. I can dream, can’t I?

I have had the extreme displeasure of working directly for this company as a contractor. Despite having multiple contracts signed and in place with them for work that I completed — they still refused payment for my services. I know the owners of this company personally and can attest that they are vile, selfish, exceedingly wealthy shells of humans. It’s unfortunate they were awarded a “Small Business Loan” when they steal from actual small businesses.

But how about this much more humane response? Simply:
Expropriate them! Without compensation!
Just like the owners of the Station House Cafe in Point Reyes, (SF Chronicle) who are trebling the rent and making the tenants take over all costs, including property taxes.

It’s bad enough that Veritas had the audacity to even apply for a PPP loan. But that they were awarded millions & accepted it with no intention of returning it is criminal & appalling. It is par for the course however given this slime ball company’s “alleged” business practices.

Veritas bought the building I live in a few years ago and is now my landlord. They are greedy and seem to have no concern what anyone thinks of their boldly questionable business practices.

Unfortunately, I can’t confirm the details of what they “allegedly” did to us tenants upon acquiring our building–because I’m “allegedly” forbidden by the “alleged” settlement terms of the lawsuit we brought against them. But that alone should tell you something.

I’m glad they’re grabbing the attention of more than just their own tenants and housing rights activists now. Perhaps with all the bad press, they’ll have no choice but to do better.

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